Presumably in February 1943, the 40-year-old Jewish woman Lucie Friedlaender had to go underground. During the first two weeks she was hidden by Luise and Willy Kroll in the couple’s Berlin-Charlottenburg home. Lucie’s former partner Rose Ollendorff and the latter’s current partner Käte Laserstein were also hiding there.
On March 1, 1943, the three women had to leave their refuge. From then on, they spent most of their time until the end of the war in a primitive unheated shed in the Wilmersdorf district, which belonged to Ollendorff’s former teacher Gertrud Kopitsch, who also provided them with food.
In February 1945 the three of them found shelter with Elisabeth Wust, whom they had met in a restaurant. Wust told her neighbors the women were “bombed-out cousins from Frankfurt.” Several weeks after their liberation, on August 17, 1945, Lucie Friedlaender poisoned herself using barbital in Wust’s apartment; she died five days later. She was buried in Weißensee Jewish Cemetery on August 26. Elisabeth Wust and Rose Ollendorff were the only mourners.